RCEM VISION 2020

RCEM Vision 2020 is our plan to fix emergency department Staffing, Systems and Support to deliver excellent patient centred care. You’ll find out where we are now and why our vision is needed, along with details of how we aim to fix emergency medicine in the tabs below.

Where are we now?

During the Autumn of 2017 the challenges facing NHS Emergency Departments (EDs) are less in the news, but the problems they face have not gone away. In our view, presently, the system is just coping after a terrible winter performance in many parts of the UK: there is an urgent need for action to tackle the problems facing Emergency Care.

There is a myth that patients are choosing to come to Emergency Departments instead of other services whereas the facts show that the growth is in step with the rising population in the UK. Since 2010/11 attendances in England have increased by 1,031,164 (7.4%) – equivalent to the workload of 10 medium sized departments – and this number is set to rise.

Patients rightly expect to be seen, treated, and admitted or discharged in under four hours – the national standard. But the workforce and resources are not growing to meet this demand — demand which has historically defied all attempts to reduce it. As a result, emergency care staff are working to the very limits of their abilities, 12-hour patient waits have increased, performance has declined to the worst for 15 years and safety is increasingly compromised.

The NHS’s emergency medical workforce is simply not large enough and so faces a significant challenge to meet the health needs of a growing and ageing population with increasingly complex needs. Emergency Departments are at the very heart of our emergency care systems and, as one of the few places in the NHS to offer a 24-hours a day, 7 days a week service, there is an increasing demand from patients to access them in their times of need.

More hospital beds
We estimate that we have a shortfall of at least 5,065 hospital beds in England alone to get occupancy rates back to safe levels (85% of all beds - a level we are consistently over). More beds are vital to tackle ‘exit block’ and overcrowding. Better social care provision and community care will also help maintain flow in the hospital system.

Emergency Care Transformation Programme
To achieve all of the above will require a robust and practical workforce plan that over a four-year period will help reduce the £1.3m being spent each day on locum agency staff.

Priorities for 2017 to 2020

To improve emergency medicine and deliver what is needed, over a three year period we will focus our resources and activities on three strategic aims: